The President Muhammadu Buhari administration has stated
that its plan to feed school children at home is not a scam.
Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Social Development,
Sadiya Umar Farouq, spoke on Thursday.
Many Nigerians on and off social media have been condemning
the policy, insisting that it was not transparent.
On Wednesday, the Nigerian Patriots (NP) called the feeding
scheme a fraud and insisted that those benefitting must be punished.
Days earlier, a former Deputy National Chairman of the
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Bode George, has chided the Buhari government
over the programme.
“Pumping money into school feeding programme while the
schools are not open is a little absurd. It is a redundant, unworkable
palliative. In a nation where there is no standard numbering of houses, how do
you get the food to the beneficiaries? This is more than laughable. It is
tragic”, George declared.
But Farouq has defended the government’s decision to spend
N679million on the programme.
She spoke in Lagos at the flag-off of food items
distribution under the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP) at
the St. Francis Primary School in Maryland.
Farouq was represented by the Director of National
Commission for Refugees, Immigrants and IDPs, Margaret Ukaegbu.
The minister said feeding children at home is an
internationally accepted practice to check food insecurity and malnutrition.
“The idea of take-home rations is not unique to Nigeria,
neither is it a scam. It is a globally accepted means of continuing to have
access to nutrition and nutritionally-rich foods, despite disruptions to the
traditional channels of school feeding,” The Nation quoted her as saying.
Titilola Adeyemi-Doro, Special Assistant to the President on
NHGSFP, said 37,589 households were selected out of 112,767 pupils benefiting
from the school feeding programme in Lagos.
The official explained that the team “engaged the community
to formulate the definition of being poor and not being able to provide for
their wards”.
She said priority was given to “women, widow-headed
households, households headed by persons with a disability, households whom the
head has lost his or her job and have no or little income among other
criteria”.
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